The Biggest Threat to Our Democracy: Illiteracy and the Science-Deniers Who Contribute to it

Posted September 25, 2019

By Kareem Weaver, Member of Education Committee, NAACP, Oakland Branch

It turns out that we know exactly why Johnny can’t read. However, instead of using the brain science and overwhelming research consensus, we’re still using strategies that reflect our own biases and theories. Johnny is left to fend for himself, and the only time he may receive the support he needs is when he reaches the point of crisis.

In 2000, the federal government responded to the country’s reading confusion by producing the seminal work in the field. The National Reading Panel’s conclusions were clear: students need direct, explicit instruction that teaches phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. Depending on your cultural flavor, one can call this Structured Literacy or the Marva Collins way, but it’s simply evidence-based practices which leverage research.

However, our educational institutions are failing to implement the Reading Panel’s findings. University training has been inadequate, forcing K-12 systems to fill classrooms with under-prepared teachers who then receive little support, training, or aligned materials. The woeful results are as predictable as the day is long.

In December of 2018, President Trump took a significant step towards reforming our criminal justice system when he signed The First Step Act. The law also includes provisions for screening inmates for dyslexia (which California’s Department of Education says is one of the main causes of low reading scores) and provides the support needed by those who have dyslexia to earn a GED.

So, here’s the rub… People shouldn’t have to go to prison to get the help they need. Uncle Sam is doing what the K-12 and educator preparation programs have failed to do.

As the law suggests, we already have the know-how to identify and help people who struggle with reading. And while not all struggling readers are dyslexic, their need for direct, Structured Literacy instruction makes dyslexic students the proverbial canaries in the coal mine; their success is a great indicator as to whether all students are being provided with effective, research-based instruction.

Frankly, it really shouldn’t take the NAACP getting involved. But, given that less than 50% of California’s students are meeting the reading standard, and the federal penitentiary is the only place they can be assured of getting help, we all need to come together to stop the madness. While educators debate the politics of reading, Johnny has literally become their political prisoner. Studies have shown that nearly 80% of inmates are functionally illiterate and 47-50% have dyslexia.

The NAACP, in Oakland, has made literacy our main educational focus. We must ensure the effectiveness of our institutions, protect our democracy, and save our children. We must have full and complete literacy, now. It’s time to stop the blaming and politicization. Let’s demand direct, Structured Literacy instruction taught by well-prepared teachers who have the materials and support they need.

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19 responses to “The Biggest Threat to Our Democracy: Illiteracy and the Science-Deniers Who Contribute to it”

Kareem, thank you so much for having the bravery to say this publicly. I see the gap in reading ability/achievement for students as the biggest equity/social justice issue we have in California and in the nation. If children can’t read, how can we ever expect them to grow up and become fully educated, gainfully employed, active, civically engaged citizens? Sometimes I wonder if we aren’t maintaining the gap on purpose so certain students/children will never become active, engaged citizens. It makes me sad/angry especially when we have the research and tools to effectively address the situation. Don’t give up!

42 years later in my family. Never knew my husband could not read until we were married. He was in and out of local courts and jails because he would act out in frustration. Once when he faced work release I asked the judge if he could get help for his reading and writing. The judge said he can get help when he is released. The other impacts are social emotional; substance abuse, depression, and anxiety. We were not aware that he was dyslexic until it happened to our son. Then the light bulb turned on in my brain. I then knew what happened to my husband. Back in his school years he would act out in class to get out of doing the work he was unable to do. He would be sent to the office where he would get the paddle. His parents would be called and he would get a worse beating at home. Our son had his own challenges in school. In the 2nd grade he would throw objects, chairs, and push desks. Third grade his special help was sitting at a round table with 6 other kids with a parent volunteer walking around the table while the kids at their desks made fun of him all unbeknown to me until he came home one day and repeatedly banged his head against the wall and said ‘I’m dumb. I’m stupid. I wish I were dead. I wish I were never born.’. I was afraid I would find my son dead so i took him to a psychiatrist where he was diagnosed with depression and anxiety and was put on prozac at the age of 8. We had to sue the school system to get him funded privately in a school for children with dyslexia. This was 24 years ago. At the time we found out our son was reading at a Kindergarten level and that was the level of reading he was being graded on and getting A’s in, in the 3rd grade. My husband’s GPA was a 1 in all classes except PE his whole time in school until he dropped out in the 10th grade. My husband was a successful auto mechanic for over 30 years until the techology required him to used a computer. He could look up the codes on a vehicle with a scanner, but he was unable to look up the meaning of the codes on a computer. Today he is unable to work because every job requires the skills of reading and writing. My son on the other hand after getting the right help and after further challenges in getting accommodations at the college level is that he is about to achieve a PhD in Biomedical Engineering. He develops devices to help people with medical issues. Currently through a NIH grant in conjunction with The Catholic University of America he has developed a device to help stroke patients regain the use of their hands. Our son is proof that when the proper educational methods are used, dyslexic and other students who learn differently can and do succeed.

No “WE” don’t. Maybe some do. Certainly many think they do – some even act like the righteous priests of the church of the “Science of Reading”. But someday soon today’s “science of reading” will be found next to phrenology and lobotomy in the museum of broken paradigms.

You see, everything about “structured literacy” (and today’s “Science of Reading”), is based on the assumption that the orthography is static. Based on the assumption that the words are inert and can’t in of themselves teach people to read and understand them. Because the words can’t help, we have to train the brains of readers to be able to automatically work out the recognition of unfamiliar words by reflexively applying abstractly learned knowledge and skills. That’s where it all breaks down (and always has). When we had no choice but to teach reading on paper, then this model was understandable. Now that we can use “e-text” as the medium of learning to read, teaching the way we have been is absurd.

I completely agree with your passion to help all who struggle with reading (not just “dyslexics”). However, when you weld it to an instructional model you enter the same combat zone that has led to 25 years of near flat line reading.

Are you open to learning about ways to help struggling readers that are outside your paradigm of “structured literacy”? How about “interactive orthography: a dynamically differentiating structure for learning literacy”

Thank-you. As the only functionally literate person in my immediate family, I know that structured literacy works, as I’m the only one who was taught to read with it. My grandmother was a teacher, but she taught pre-Orton-Gillingham, so my Dad was her biggest regret. Teaching hundreds of kids to read, but not your youngest son, was devestating to her and she took that pain to her grave. Of course, it was lucky for me that my school was using Slingerland during my elementary school years. That’s why I could not fathom why my son’s school didn’t know how to teach him to read. They said they knew, they thought they knew how, but “wait to fail” proved that they had no clue what to do with students with Dyslexia. I fell for their ignorance for too many years, after all, they have master’s degrees, right? When I finally quit believing them and started using Barton Reading and Spelling finally progress happened. For the first time, at age 14, my son made progress, and he saw the progress himself. We worked every summer, all summer, each year undoing the maladaptive strategies the teachers and paraeducators encouraged. There are no magic bullets to immediate literacy, but when he graduated this year, we had him at a 5th-grade level. Over this summer, we worked hard again, and preliminary testing shows him to have progressed quickly to a 7th-grade level, which was helped greatly by all those years we spent reading to him and the hundreds of audiobooks he listened to, over 8,000 pages August of 2018. He won an award from his audiobook supplier, so that’s why we know the number of pages as they keep track. His post-high school goals are to get his driver’s license and read well enough to go to college someday. Again, thank you. Every time a well-known organization researches the science sees the injustice, discrimination and joins the fight for our kids, we take a big step toward equality and literacy for all.

Thank you for bringing the literacy issues faced by struggling readers and dyslexia out into the public forum. Parents spoke out at a school board meeting to address the lack of structured literacy at our schools. A school board member had just made a comment about the link between absenteeism and the “school to prison” pipeline. My remark to them was to take a look at why some of these kids aren’t going to school. For my own 3 dyslexic sons, as for many struggling readers, frustration, embarrassment, being teased and bullied, reading failure leading to anxiety, depression and school avoidance are a reality. With 20% of students having some form of dyslexia and up to 60% of students reading below grade level, there are going to be a lot of kids avoiding school. Our schools are failing so many students so instead of pointing the fingers at parents, we need to put the pressure on schools. It’s an atrocity that schools are feeding our children into the school to prison pipeline. Structured literacy works. My son progressed 4 1/2 grade levels in reading , in one school year, when provided with an evidence based structured literacy program ! It was a life changing event for him and our whole family. It changed the trajectory of my son’s academic career from failure to hope and achievement. I had to seek litigation to get my son the education he needed ! No school has ever offered him the chance to learn how to read or given him the tools he needed through evidence based structured literacy. All students deserve the chance to learn how to read.

David, I completely disagree. Although our language is of course always expanding, that just makes it more complex to learn — involving morphology as well as phonics/phonology — but it’s not less predictable, or able to be mastered to automaticity on a word by word basis. If you’ve read the writings of Samuel Orton, and the work he did with Anna Gillingham, much of it still rings true 100 years later. More importantly, when word reading is not done with automaticity (and is an “interactive” process), we lose our ability to focus our working memory on the ultimate purpose of reading, comprehending — in the same way that new drivers cannot safely carry on conversations with passengers until they have mastered the mechanics of driving so that it’s an automatic process. The greatest cause of this “flat line” reading progress is that people like you keep perpetuating a debate about something that is no longer debatable, and it’s our kids who will continue to suffer.

I am saying that everything you think you understand about reading is completely warped by your assumption that words are static objects. I am not arguing with you about how you think about reading in that context. What you are asserting is analogous to defending the science of sail rigging on sailing ships. If sails are the only option, you are quite right, but once we can use engines, the science of designing sails becomes irrelevant to the future of ships.

In the near future, kids will learn to read in profoundly more neurologically efficient and emotionally safe ways. In the near future, the majority of kids, including dyslexic kids, will learn to read without ever being taught (in any way resembling the ways kids are taught today). Instead, their every interaction with every word on every device (phones, tablets, computers, TV sets, augmented reality glasses, etc.) will be supported by “virtual” reading teachers and reference librarians – by “learning-guide bots” that are always tracking alongside their minds and instantly ready to help. Should a learner stumble reading an unfamiliar word, the helpers immediately appear to support and guide them. I am not talking about reading to them, rather scaffolding their learning to read at level currently inconceivable to those whose minds are trapped in two dimensional static orthography.

I will let the late Robert Sweet answer this question in 1996: “An effective answer to illiteracy … Let me offer a less costly, and more effective answer. I have here a twenty-five-page booklet called Blend Phonics written by Hazel Loring, a master teacher born in 1902, who taught under both the “whole word” and phonics systems. The legacy she has left us is powerful. Within the pages of this little booklet is the cure of illiteracy as we begin the twenty-first century. … If every pre-service reading teacher, every reading supervisor, every kindergarten, first- and second-grade teacher in America had the information contained in Hazel Loring’s 25-page booklet and taught it this fall, there would be such a dramatic decrease in illiteracy in this country that the national media would be forced to take note.” You can obtain a free copy of Hazel Loring’s 25-page booklet at http://www.blendphonics.org. I have taught students from kindergarten through 41-years old with it.

I responded at length to your criticisms yesterday but my submission went from “pending moderator approval” to disappearing. This might be because I included links to examples and resources (something I thought I could do on this page as Debbie had done).

Moderator: can you explain why my response was deleted or is still pending?

Correction: “I am saying [remove “the only reason”, replace with “one of the main reasons”] we continue to have so many kids struggling with reading is the because of the “paradigm inertia that pervades reading science and policy”

So, David Boulton, if you have something that I can use quickly and easily and CHEAPLY to teach a kid—any kid—to read, bring it on! Right at this moment, the only thing readily available to me and most others is explicit and sequenced instruction in the sounds/spellings/meanings of the language. I mean, I can teach a child that way with a piece of chalk on the sidewalk or a stick in dirt.

And we DO know why Johnny can’t read. Assuming that Johnny is one of those kids who do not pick up the “code” easily, who are not whole to part learners (which learners learn “lake” and “cake” and immediately can handle “sake” and “fake” and “rake,” and can easily make the switch to “fade, rate, cave” etc., then “cove, rove, note” and onward with all silent-e patterns without being given explicit instruction in that particular orthographic pattern). Assuming that about Johnny, or that Johnny is reading disabled, the reason Johnny can’t read is because he has not been taught, by whatever method. It is really that simple.

As to thinking that orthography is static and that words are inert, that is sheer nonsense. When I taught teachers how to teach reading, I explained that we began by teaching very young children certain things that are reasonably reliable in terms of sound/spelling relationships in order to get kids started. I explained that we could NOT try to teach the truth of English words to very young children, because all the first graders would be overwhelmed if we did that. But when I am teaching an older child to read, one who has been overlooked one way or another, and I know I have a limited time to teach that child, I must tell him and show him the truth. Older children who are learning to read have to understand that the language and the sound/spelling “rules” are not reliable and that there are exceptions to everything. They have to know how to interpolate meaning and interpolate pronunciation, how to look beyond spellings, and how to relate all that they are reading to their oral language. Those kids, who very often have little support from parents or schools, have to be made resilient and scrappy about the language, and they must understand that they own it, THEY own it. And ultimately, they will have to call some shots when reading, take some chances, hazard some guesses. These kids learn to read, and they also learn to wield the language with authority and confidence.

As to the flat line of reading, it has lasted for a lot longer than 25 years. It is because most teachers do not teach reading in any effective way. They remain stuck on the idea that kids will learn if read to enough. I’ve been in many classrooms throughout the nation and I’ve seen it again and again. Most teachers do not have a clue how to teach reading by any method, and if you try to give them a method that they don’t like, believe me, they will not use it.

In any case, David, if you have something, share it. Otherwise, you are just trolling on this site and claiming superiority over the rest of us apparently lumbering along in the dark ages. (Though I know I can already teach children to read . . . ) What you are posting here is not helpful. I looked at both site you posted saw nothing useful on either. On one, I didn’t even see a coherent method, just lots of little activities, and on the other I saw lots of misunderstanding being shaped into a “thing.” To me, it shows ignorance of the field. Like Reed Lyons said, we can’t change the code! And that whole thing about the time it takes kids to read “big” words is nonsense. If a child has been taught, they can read “big” words readily. How many kids have you taught to read, David? And by what method? And how many classrooms of all ages have you observed in, David? I’m sorry, but I just feel like you are being negative, but you have nothing to replace what you are condemning.

Can you be the same David who created Children of the Code? That David interviewed and interacted knowledgeably/empathetically over the years with many remarkable literacy researchers, policy makers and cognitive scientists. If so, I cannot now understand your impassioned diatribe against the evidence-based, structured teaching needed for beginner readers and/or older non-reading children/adults? Interactive orthography may serve as a resource, temporary or as needed, for support in word-level reading, pronunciation and/or vocabulary understanding, but nothing replaces self-actualized reading knowledge gained when first (or later) exposed to reading.

I received foster care benefits for a student. He had a reading disability “Dyslexia” At 17 District tested him at 2nd grade reading level. I used my foster care benefits to hire an attorney and District used their attorney at every Individual Education Plan Meeting. At 18 District denied his reading remediation. He graduated in June 2019. I wanted to break the cycle of poverty he was born into. He lived in the Salvation Army LA two years before moving to Temecula. There are reading programs, private schools for students who struggle with reading. The families with money pay for private school or hire an attorney to “fight” against families, not provide reading. Confidential Settlement agreements “Hush Agreements” are often created between family who hires an attorney or the case goes in front of a judge. Our tax dollars are being used at Districts with private law firms to fight, not support reading. So many students have followed the pipeline to prison because they felt student and couldn’t read. I joined the NAACP. Until Everyone Can Read.

I love that this work is being done in Oakland. I look forward to learning more about the work your doing and advocate for structured literacy at Sfusd. As a parent I’ve been rather shocked by the assumptions surrounding how children learn to read and the insistence that more reading will solve the issue of low reading skills of aa and ell kids.